I recently read how a "Graduating Student Credits His 'Angel" for allowing his graduation to happen and I was interested to understand the story better.

A young man who was graduating from college told the story about how Oral Lee Brown was his "Real Life Angel." In 1987 Brown, a real estate agent in Northern California, saw a young girl in her neighborhood begging for money. When she went to the school the girl had claimed to attend, Brown couldn't find her; but that day she made a decision that would change the lives of many other children forever. She adopted an entire first-grade class in one of Oakland's lowest-performing schools, and she pledged that she personally would pay for anyone who wanted to attend college.

This would be a great story even if Oral Lee Brown were independently wealthy; however, it is a much greater story considering she was a former cotton picker from Mississippi who made $45,000 a year and was raising two children of her own. Brown lived up to her pledge. Since 1987, she has personally saved $10,000 a year while also raising donations for her "adopted first-grade kids." And because of her tremendous act of unselfish love, children who could have been "swallowed by the streets" are now graduating from college to pursue their dreams.

Discovering our purpose in life is critical to making life exciting and worthwhile.

Gautama Chopra says, "Everyone has a special purpose, a special talent or gift to give others, and it's your duty to discover what it is. Your special talent is God's gift to you. What you do with your talent is your gift to God." Professional baseball player, preacher, and orator, Billy Sunday said, "more men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent."

According to Helen Keller, "Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes real happiness. It is not obtained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." The Sufi poet Rumi tells us to think of our lives as if we had been sent by a king to a distant country with a special task. All of us are on a quest to make a life for ourselves that is purposeful. "You might do a hundred other things, but if you fail to do the one thing for which you were sent it will be as if you had done nothing."

Here at www.ryanwalter.com we often discuss "how to stay HUNGRY" in our lives and professions.

One of the keys to sustaining our personal hungry spirit is to find and actualize our personal purpose.

(The story above is an exerpt from 212° Kindness, "The Extra Degree,"
by Sam Parker and Mac Anderson)